


Evidentiary Support

by Pinkerton



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 'Swawesome Santa, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5399669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkerton/pseuds/Pinkerton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty is really good at dealing with his crush on Jack, and other lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evidentiary Support

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortlimbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortlimbs/gifts).



**Part One: Bitty**

They’ve been packing for a few hours, and the conversation has faded into comfortable silence. Lardo is wearing rolls of packing tape on both arms, and Bitty has a streak of dust down his front from where he crawled under the bed to pack up his yoga mat and errant books and CDs he’ll want over the summer break. It’s been a long day – dumpster diving for boxes, packing Lardo’s dorm up and driving the boxes across campus to unload them at the Haus, followed by a break for lunch before tackling Bitty’s room – but they’re within a box or two of finishing, and some pricey microbrews are chilling downstairs in the fridge to reward a job well done. Bitty doesn’t have to strip his room bare, thankfully, but he doesn’t want to overlook anything he might need for camp, and his advisor’s recommended summer reading list is intimidating, to say the least, a tower of books sitting in a crooked stack on the floor.

He bends to sort the books into boxes, while Lardo tackles the closet. She’s standing on her tiptoes on a chair, knocking things around the upper shelves. “Hey, there’s a box up here,” she says, ducking down and hopping off the chair. She’s holding a shoebox that’s a little dinged up around the edges. She shakes it. “Not shoes. Whatever is in it is light. Keep, pack or trash?”

Bitty glances over. “Oh, that. Just put it on the desk. I’ll toss it later.”

Lardo does, and they finish not ten minutes later.

* * *

Between beers two and three, Bitty sneaks upstairs and tucks the shoebox back into the farthest corner of the closet. He pauses before closing the door, and glances around the room. When his eyes land on a throw pillow, he grabs it and covers the box with it. Perfect. Not that anyone would give its contents– one receipt, one unlabeled CD, and one small, white, terrycloth towel – a second thought. But, better safe than sorry.

* * *

_The receipt._

“It is too doggone cold for frozen yogurt!” Bitty protests, burrowing deeper into his scarf. He scowls at Jack as they walk together through the campus.

“You were the one who agreed to come,” Jack says. He’s not even wearing a scarf, and his jacket isn’t fully buttoned. “You’ve played ice hockey for years, how are you not used to cold? Were you confused by the “ice” part when you signed up?”

“I would chirp you but I need to conserve my body heat,” Bitty sniffs.

“Weak,” Jack says, “Your southern inability to deal with cold is why the north won the civil war.”

“Oh my god, what?”

“I read it online, I swear.”

Bitty tries really hard to not smile.

Jack continues, “The Yankees rode their polar bears—“

“What are you--”

“Rode them down the Mason-Dixon line—“

“Not a road!”

“And then Abraham Lincoln himself snowboarded into Atlanta—“

“OH MY GOOD GRACIOUS, STOP!” Bitty says, laughing fully, trying to punch Jack’s arm.

Jack dances away from him, grinning. “Yeah, but you forgot that you’re cold, right?”

Bitty’s breath catches. Jack’s standing in full sun, his blue, blue eyes sparkling. A faint flush from the crisp air is pinking his nose and cheeks, and he’s smiling wide enough that his super elusive nose crinkle is happening.

Bitty is so, so screwed.

They make it to the shop, and Bitty teases Jack about the super extravagant three bits of Oreo he crowns his plain vanilla and strawberries with. Jack, yet again, manages to swipe his credit card for the both of them before Bitty can even unearth his own wallet, and they camp out at the big table by the window for a good hour.

Bitty’s warm and happy when they leave, internally chanting his mantra. _Straight friend, he’s your straight friend, straight straight straight, friend friend friend._

A few days later, Bitty empties out his coat pockets as he sorts laundry, and finds the yogurt receipt crumpled up beside a few clean napkins he swiped off the table. He tucks the receipt into his pocket, and when he gets to his room he places it into an old shoebox, firmly not analyzing what he’s doing, nope, not even a little.

* * *

_The CD._

“Oh you slippery little sucker,” Bitty says, as the mostly peeled peach flies out of his hands after an overly hard swipe with a paring knife, the fruit sailing across the kitchen.

Jack rounds the corner and catches it in mid air.

Bitty’s jaw drops.

“Bits, did you say ‘fucker’?” Holster asks from where he has his feet up on the table, eyes fixed on a text book in his lap.

“How—“ Bitty manages, as Jack tosses the peach back to him.

“Reflexes,” Jack says, as he wipes his hand on his shirt, opens the fridge, pulls out a bottle of water, and drinks deeply, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

 _I am so in love with you,_ Bitty thinks, his eyes tracing the line of Jack’s throat as he drinks.

“Yo, Jack, come save me from studying,” Holster says, swinging his feet to the floor and throwing his book across the kitchen. It glances off the counter before hitting the floor.

“Rude,” Bitty hisses, watching Jack’s arms flex under his thin t-shirt as he reaches for a glass from the top shelf.

“Sorry, my bad,” Holster says, walking over and grabbing his book.

“I could hang,” Jack says, bringing the glass and a bottle of juice to the table.

Bitty groans.

* * *

The afternoon hangout goes on and on, and eventually Bitty starts to make a quick stir-fry for dinner. Jack and Holster’s conversation weaves in and out of Bitty’s awareness as he loses himself to the rhythms of chopping.

“Wait, I’ve heard this before,” Jack says.

Bitty startles. He’s had the radio on at low volume all day, not really paying attention to it. He reaches to turn it up.

 _”But she wears short skirts_  
_I wear t-shirts_  
_She's cheer captain_  
_And I'm on the bleachers_ ”

“This?” Holster asks, incredulous. “This is a song you know?”

“Yeah,” Jack answers, his head bobbing along slightly.

“How the fuck do you know this song? I mean, apart from it being super popular and well known, which has never helped you know any song created after 1990 before this moment?” Holster asks, his fingers flying over his phone’s keyboard. Bitty would bet a year’s tuition that he’s relaying this word for word to Ransom, who’s holed up in the library.

“Camilla’s roommate played it a lot,” Jack says. “It’s catchy.”

“How is Camilla?” Holster asks, still texting.

Jack shrugs. “Fine, probably. Haven’t seen her in a while.”

“No?” Holster asks, flicking his eyes away from his phone.

Neither boy notices Bitty going absolutely still.

“Oh,” Jack says. “I guess I didn’t really say. We broke up. Still friends. All good.”

“So—“ Holster starts.

“No,” Jack says, as Bitty starts to breath again.

Holster frowns. “Fine, I don’t need your help to get dates anyway.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Bitty resumes chopping not in time to the music, but to the up and down intonation of his silent train of thought. _Single but straight, single but straight, single but straight._

“Been here all along,  
So, why can't you see,  
You belong with me—“

Jack Zimmermann is honest to god singing along to Taylor Swift in Bitty’s kitchen.

Bitty is just about to keel over and die when Holster decides to show Jack the “I Knew You Were Trouble” screaming goat video. The night spirals into an effort to educate Jack on memes. The success is moderate, the stir-fry delicious, and Bitty’s heart aches a little less every time Jack laughs.

Bitty loans him the copy of Taylor Swift’s debut album that a friend burned for him way back in the technological dark ages. When Jack returns it, he smiles that crooked smile that shows up in Bitty’s dream. “I liked it,” Jack says. “Thanks.”

The CD stays on Bitty’s desk for two days before he sighs and tucks it into the shoebox.

* * *

_The towel._

The team’s annual charity drive is a simple car wash in the parking lot across from the local country club, held each spring on the day that the club’s pool opens for the season. Bitty was confused by this his frog year, until hoards of middle-aged moms swarmed out after morning swim hours and a line of idling SUVs started forming down the block. This year, Bitty is prepared. He walks the line in his Spring C outfit, selling wildly overpriced fresh lemonade and cookies, winking at the ladies and playing up his drawl.

He sells out in twenty minutes.

There are three wash stations, and while business is brisk for all of them, the moms seem to take extra effort to jockey for a position in the second line. The second line, at the end of which is Jack Zimmermann, wearing only a pair of wet, clinging, close cut swim trunks, waiting to wash your car while making painfully polite, Canadian accented small talk with you.

Bitty has never considered grand theft auto before, but…

They raise almost $15,000 for the local Boys and Girls Club, a new record.

And if one of the towels Jack used to wipe his face off with makes it home with Bitty, isn’t that just a tiny bit more of Jack’s generosity being paid forward?

Bitty slips the towel into the shoebox, then stands in front of his dresser, staring into the mirror and having a very long, silent conversation with himself about things like “integrity” and “friendship” and “hopelessness.”

He sighs, deeply. “Enough,” he says, looking himself in the eye. “Enough.”

* * *

Bitty can’t bring himself to throw the box out, but he does stop adding to it. He doesn’t add the game winning puck Jack had smashed into the goal during the final seconds of their playoff run, a puck he handed Bitty with a smile and a shrug as he said, “I couldn’t have done it without your assist, Bittle. Take it, c’mon.” He doesn’t add the recipe card for the pie he made Jack to celebrate his last class as a Wellie. And he really tests his restraint by not adding the program from graduation, crumpled slightly at the corners.

* * *

**Part Two: Jack**

Jack knew, firmly, that the most terrifying sound in the world was the silence the moment after crashing down to the ice, the stretched out seconds between the hit and the feel of pain, the whirl of white nothing from the crowd that tells you this one might be really bad.

Or so he thought, until his hard drive quit with a gentle whir and clunk on a sunny February afternoon. The screen flickered and faded, taking with it hundreds of pages of meticulously annotated play notes, game tape, and all his photos.

The reassuring chimes of Dex’s return text a few moments later, on the other hand, were music to his ears.

* * *

Dex arrives on the 7:30 bus, waving off Jack’s offers of season tickets and summer vacations on him, mumbling, “Buy me dinner and pay for the bus ticket like a normal person, c’mon.”

Jack guides him through his apartment to his home office. “I would have called someone local but—“

Dex stops, his hand raised to silence Jack. “Yes, celebrity sports player, please tell me more about how it is a great idea to hand a stranger the keys to your financial and social history.”

Jack laughs. “Thanks for coming, Poindexter. I really appreciate it.”

“I got your back. Now, let’s see what you did to this thing.”

* * *

Jack’s desk is littered in empty take out cartons and bits of machinery, but by 2 am, Dex has salvaged the majority of Jack’s files and moved everything to a shiny new Macbook Pro that had been couriered straight to Jack’s door. Dex doesn’t know it yet, but an identical one is winging its way to the Haus for him. Jack will deal with the fallout from that later.

Dex is eating the last of a cold egg roll and poking around Jack’s photo files. “You kept up with this, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s relaxing.”

Dex leans closer as he scrolls through. “You do some good things with light, I gotta say. Hey, are any of these folders…uh, private?”

Jack snorts. “Like PR hasn’t given us a million lectures about how ‘private’ photos are anything but.”

Dex laughs a little. “Your job is weird.” He flips to the next file, and a familiar face fills the screen. “Bits hasn’t had his hair this long for a while. When were these taken?”

“My senior year. It was a class project.”

“There’s a lot of him,” Dex says, scrolling.

“He was always around.”

“Yeah,” Dex says, noticing the background of the photos changing from Samwell to Providence to – “Is that…did you guys go to an Aces game?”

“Sort of. He flew out for my first game in Vegas.”

“Uh,” Dex says. “Is this…”

“Oh, my parent’s house. My mom and him are thick as thieves.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Dex says. He closes out the folder and swivels the chair around to face Jack. “You know, Bitty and David broke up.”

“What? When?”

“Last week. Bitty instigated. He’s already moved past sad baking, which, thank god, there’s only so much cobbler even a hockey team can eat. But, yeah. Bitty’s single again.”

“Ok,” Jack says, his brow furrowing slightly. “He didn’t tell me.”

Dex glances to the computer screen, and then back at Jack. He lets a few seconds pass before rolling his eyes and getting up, stretching his back. “Yeah, it’s not a secret or anything. Weird. Anyway, I’m ready to hit the hay.”

Jack is staring at the computer.

“Bro? Guest room?”

“Oh. Yeah. This way.”

* * *

Dex heads out the early next morning to make his first class, taking a rain check on Jack’s offer of breakfast.

Jack has a few hours to kill before practice, so he turns on his shiny new computer. He needs to see if the coaches sent out any notices, needs to check his calendar and maybe Skype his mom real quick.

Instead, he clicks on the folder Dex labeled “Bitty.”

He scrolls through a few photos before stopping on one. He and Bitty had stopped by the lake to eat lunch senior year. Jack caught a candid of Bitty holding out a crust from his sandwich to a goose, the spring sun soft on his face. Bitty’s biting his lip, leaning forward with that dancer’s grace he kept from his figure skating days.

The next photo makes Jack’s breath catch. Bitty is staring at the camera dead on, color high on his cheeks, and a scowl on his face. Bitty had gotten some harsh commentary back on a paper he’d labored over for weeks, and it took Jack two hours of slow but steady chirping to get him from sad to mad. Five minutes later, Jack finally got a smile out of him.

Jack clicks once more. It’s Bitty, again, walking ahead of Jack in a park in Montreal, looking back over his shoulder at Jack. The trip was in the summer; Bitty’s shoulders are bare under a tank top, and his hair is lighter than normal. Lulu, the Zimmermann family’s Maltese, is at Bitty’s heels. They’d hiked for hours, then fallen asleep in front of an old black and white movie. When Jack had woken up, Bitty had been curled into him.

Jack focuses on that memory. Bitty had smelled like soap and sunshine. He’d turned into Jack like he was cold, and Jack had swept a blanket over them both, then fallen right back asleep.

Leaning forward, Jack opens a search box, and finds the photos he took of Bitty shivering outside the Falc’s practice space in January. It was MLK Day weekend. Bitty, after discovering Jack’s hidden stash of frozen comfort food, had taught him how to make a béchamel sauce for mac and cheese from scratch, covering Jack’s hand on the whisk with his own, feeding Jack bites of the finished pasta while they impatiently waited for it to cool, and later falling asleep, again, on the couch, sunk into Jack’s side like he was meant to be there.

Jack sits back, checking the time. He should really crack down and get to work if he wants to be able to walk to practice instead of driving.

He ends up going down a Google rabbit hole, and when he checks the time it's late. Walking is no longer an option, and he's going to have to push the speed limit most of the way. He leaves the office in a hurry, the desk chair still spinning as he runs to the bathroom to brush his teeth and grab his gear.

Five minutes later, as he's locking the front door, the laptop pops up a warning that it will go into sleep mode in 1 minute. Behind the warning, Jack's last search results are displayed in perfect, Retina display.

“How long after a break up before you can ask someone out?”

 

* * *  
A few months later, and Jack definitely does have a private folder in his photo collection, management’s warnings be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Swawesome Santa, shortlimbs! I tried to go heavy on the pining, but light on anguish. I really hope it worked!
> 
> Thanks to muchandquick for the beta.
> 
> I'm agrossunderstatement on Tumblr.


End file.
